Southern Cross Rams had their annual spring sale on Tuesday, October 5, and what a successful event it was.
Southern Cross Rams had up to 170 rams on sale for the day, selling an astonishing 152.
The high fertility Poll Dorset rams were vaccinated and ready to work, with buyers snapping them up in droves.
In the week following the annual spring sale, the sellers sold the rest of the available rams, which have now been delivered to their respective buyers.
Stud Principal Keith Smith from Southern Cross Rams was extremely pleased with the outcome of the sale.
“It was tremendous, a very pleasing sale,” Keith said.
“It was well attended and was a very hectic and busy day. It was very successful in that regard.”
The team at Southern Cross Rams explained the extensive grading process their Sheep go through, determining the premium rams and the cheaper rams.
“Generally, we get them all stock scanned recorded, which is a muscle scoring and gives each ram an index value figure with a sliding scale,” Keith explained.
“The higher the number the better the ram as far as muscle score, which is quite important with Poll Dorset’s.
“We use those figures, then visually we inspect the rams on a scale structure, to make sure they stand correctly and have the right attributes.
“Through a process of bringing together data plus the physical inspection, we grade them up.”
In the sale, the lowest priced rams were $900 – which were a selection of younger 1-year-old rams.
There were also 80 general flock rams on sale for $1100.
The sale yard also offered 40 specially selected 1-and-a-half-year-old rams for$1300.
All prices were exclusive of GST.
Keith Smith with daughters Hayley Smith and Casey Dumbrell.
Keith said Southern Cross Rams also offered up some rare rams that often don’t go to sale.
“We did have a select pen of rams that I’d usually keep myself, we had about a dozen of those offered for $1500 each,” he said.
“The average sale price of the day was around $1200.
“Our averages were up over $400 on last year’s results, so it’s very pleasing. We’re very happy overall.”
Southern Cross Rams were confident with their breed’s attractiveness on the market going into the auction, and it proved correct achieving great sales and results on all price ranges.
“I think our rams are structurally sound. They get the results in the sale yards as far as their carcass quality, they are very functional sheep and are adaptable,” Keith explained.
“We sell them far and wide – they go out to the western areas such as Tallimba, also to the eastern areas such as Goulburn, and down far south areas such as Culcairn.
“They do well in all situations. We run a commercial lamb breeding enterprise here called Prime Lamb, so they are tried and true.
“We use the rams ourselves and the prime lambs that come from them we can sell as early maturing lambs to supermarkets and over-the-hook or can grow them out to bigger export weights so they can be the larger-framed export lambs.”
Despite the roaring success just a couple of weeks ago, Keith and the team are already planning for next year’s annual spring sale.
“We’ve got probably 300 ram lambs or more coming through for next year and they are looking tremendous, so it’s looking very promising for next year too.”
Next year’s sale will be around a similar time in spring.
Tim Warren
